Media consumption diet: here comes Substack

Digital communications guru Howard Rheingold reminds us all:

"Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention."

When I looked in my email this morning, I realized I had a half dozen substantive newsletters waiting for me ... and realized it was time to write another one of these media consumption diet posts. So where do I get my news these days?

Over the last couple of years, I've given up and accepted that if I want quality online journalism, I have to pay for it. And given how little of anything else I've had to spend money on this pandemic year, I've gone hog wild on supporting journalism/paying for subs. So these days, I pay for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker.  I donate dollars/memberships/subscriptions to probably 20 other web-available journalistic outfits, from my neighborhood's Mission Local to Open Democracy. 

Since I've set myself up to have access to so many periodicals and other sources, how do I decide what to read first? I can't, and don't want, to read everything. Some of choices are topical: I keep an eye on election information, follow my country's imperial adventures, and am curious about the sociology of U.S. religion. I'm always interested in demographics and in struggles for more justice. I don't chase stories of outrages for outrage's sake, but if activism can accomplish something, I want to know what people are doing.

But I've made so much web based information accessible to myself, that I've had to figure out what to bother to check out and what to skip. And I realize that more and more I follow particular individual commentators, particular bylined writers, that I've learned to trust. If they move on from one outlet to another, I'm likely to follow. For example, I subscribe to The New Republic to keep up with Walter Shapiro. And I pay for New York Magazine for Olivia Nuzzi and Rebecca Traister. 

I'm consistently furious with the New York Times because I have to click on anything they categorize as a news story to find out who wrote it; other newspapers give the byline in the teaser. I would think the NYT union would be hopping mad, but I guess the prestige of writing for the Times overrides that slight to the authors. The other newspapers don't put me through that.

 

All of which brings me to the morning haul of email newsletters: I''m now following quite a few writers from whom I can learn, or who I enjoy, onto the Substack newsletter platform.

Anna Wiener explored Substack's business model for the New Yorker in December. From the consumer point of view, Substack is a medium through which to pay for and read email newsletters from writers I've discovered elsewhere -- usually on more recognizable journalistic platforms. This fits very well with how I read in other venues. Wiener is skeptical; she rightly observes that the form largely works for writers who have already established themselves elsewhere. 

But for the moment, I'm finding various Substacks satisfying. I use them to keep up with people who annoy me (Matt Yglesias via Slow Boring and Yascha Mounk via Persuasion come to mind) but who nonetheless make my horizons wider. I read Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American) putting current events in U.S. historical perspective with pure pleasure. I read David Roberts (Volts) because nobody explains climate change better. I'm grateful to Peter Beinart for being honest about U.S. empire and also about Israel/Palestine. Ditto Tony Karon. Nadia Bolz-Weber and Diana Butler Bass expand my religious sensibilities. 

Yes, all this adds up. I'm not sure how long I'll keep it up. I'm not sure how well the Substack phenomenon will hold up either; these people are out on their own creating a lot of content with little support. 

Media changes -- that's why I like to review my media consumption diet every few years.